I had an interesting experience with UPS - they shipped me a tape library from 
the U.S. to Canada... when it arrived, the inside was completely trashed. 
As in, no recognizable components bigger than a credit card. 
UPS insisted that the condition of the tape library was as they received it for 
shipment. 
Until I sent them a photograph of the puncture mark made by THEIR forklift, 
right through THEIR shipping documents... 

From: "cctalk" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
To: "cctalk" <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2019 12:21:39 PM 
Subject: Re: Shipping from Europe to USA 

> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:09 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> 
> wrote: 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Aug 22, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Peter Corlett via cctalk 
>> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: 
>> 
>> On Thu, Aug 22, 2019 at 06:30:10PM +0000, Henk Gooijen via cctalk wrote: 
>> ... 
>>> Only UPS did … and yes, the “horror” stories *are* true. They managed to 
>>> drop 
>>> the package. Not from 4 inches above ground, but more, because a *steel 
>>> corner* had a dent! 
>> 
>> Hence that old joke: "If being air dropped out of a C-130 into a minefield 
>> constitutes 'moderately rough handling', what constitutes 'very rough 
>> handling'?" "Being shipped UPS". 
> 
> I'm reminded of a legendary story from a long time ago, of a DEC disk being 
> air-shipped to a customer. RP03? Not sure, but something of that size class. 
> 
> The story was that the shipping company hadn't strapped it down properly, so 
> when the plane applied takeoff power, the drive slid backwards in the cargo 
> hold. Fast enough to exit the hold through the airplane skin, landing on the 
> runway with a nice bounce. 
> 
> The drive was taken back to Maynard, where it was observed that the corner of 
> the frame was badly bent. The techs propped it up on a cinder block and 
> turned the drive on; it worked fine. 
> 
> Sure sounds like a fairy tale, but it's a fun one. 

Friend who owned a larger regional ISP back in the day bought a new Ascend MAX. 
It shipped UPS and arrived with a perfect boot print on the side of the box. To 
this day we still make jokes about UPS playing soccer with the package. 

(Semi-related side story; A few months after installation, the Max started 
dropping calls on one line card. Ascend refused to RMA it because it passed 
diagnostics. They went back and forth over for a week or so until one day their 
sysadmin had enough; He calmly removed the card from the chassis and, with an 
Ascend tech on speakerphone, smashed the thing to bits with a hammer. “Oh, it 
just failed. Won’t pass diagnostics anymore.” He got his RMA number. The 
replacement card worked without issue for the next several years.) 

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